The [B]Miles Electric Vehicle company [/B]proposes what appears to be a rather practical all electric car that is projected to hit the market in 2009. It promises a [B]top speed of 80+ miles, a120 miles+ range and a 100.000 miles+ battery life[/B]. The price of all this is rumoured to be in the [B]30-35 thousand dollar range[/B]. So is this the car that will deliver us from the evil oil oligarchs at last, forcing us to pay for IED’s, explosive belts and global jihad in general every time we fill up our cars? Well….no. Obviously the performance goals in terms of top speed and most of all range are to limited to usher in a new era. And despite Miles claim of “Pininfarina styling” this car is anything but a looker. In fact it’s the kind of boring sedan that the avant garde “save the planet” type of clientèle that would actually consider buying an EV despite it’s drawbacks wouldn’t be seen dead in. With them screaming for cover maybe it could be targeted at calculating commuters who want to save some bucks on their daily lemming run to the office. The problem with that is of course that it’s about $ 20000,- more expensive than a comparable 35 mpg small ICE car that wouldn’t have the drawback of limited range and that would have airco to keep you cool when your contemplating your gas bill. The miles proposition doesn’t feature airco (cuts in on the range I suppose) which is an other way in which it just isn’t cool. Anyway 20 grand buys you about 5700 gallons of gas at current prices which should keep your small ICE car going for about 200000 miles. Since the XS 500 battery pack lasts for only about 100000 miles I just don’t see a way of turning a profit here. So what we’re left with is an uncool and expensive way to give in to your global warming hysteria. And with It’s unattractive styling the XS 500 doesn’t help in anyway to pave the way for future offerings by creating an attractive image for EV’s either. So back to the drawing board with this!
Well…let’s not dismiss this car out of hand though. For one thing in Europe the deck is stacked more in favour of this car due to a different structure of taxes and incentives. Also I think this is one of the first in a long line of EV offerings to come from China that in time will get more hip, more practical, less expensive and that will help us to shed our nasty and dangerous oil addiction. Also despite of all it’s flaws, if it really were to become available in 2009 it would probably be the only practical, kinda affordable EV on the market at that time. This might be an EV blessing in a (very boring) disguise after all!
any links to info?
sounds good though…
[QUOTE=FEUS;2388]any links to info?
sounds good though…[/QUOTE]
The official website of Miles:
http://www.milesev.com/index.asp
A lot of stuff about Miles Automotive and the Miles XS 500 (including the projected price) can be found in the files of Auto Blog Green through this link:
You know, breaking down what is being offered here for even the higher estimate of $35,000, is actually extremely good value! Consider the following:
New Korean sedan (or wherever its from!) bulk purchase cost each $10,000
Lithium battery pack, bulk purchase, maybe around $8K? $ 8,000
top end AC motor and all control gear, bulk purchased at say… $ 8,000
Labour cost to build, lets say conservatively 80 hours at $30ph? $ 1,800
Total per unit build cost to the company: $ 27,800
And that’s excluding the cost of premises, insurance, machinery, tooling up, infrastucture for aftersales servicing and warranty work!
Then the most important thing, what you want to make as a profit margin, remembering you have to expect low volume sales… unless you market effectively, which in turn means huge additional cost!!
And to be honest I think that most of the above is too conservative an estimate of the costs!
Just compare the cost of buying a new sedan and converting it yourself to acheive the same spec:eek:
So whatever you think of the styling, Its a bargain :D,
Sadly, we are only going to see lower priced commercial EV’s when the big boys start to build electric cars from scratch on mass production lines, if they did this, battery tech would also easily increase to give a safe range of 200 miles with enough resource thrown at it and current available technology. I reckon if Ford offered an electric focus option for example at
$2k more than the petrol version, with a 200 mile range, 30% or more sales would go this route, somehow I don’t see that happening anytime soon :mad:
Come to think of it, can you imagine GM’s EV1 updated with 2008 state of the art electronic management and the latest battery tech further developed!! it would all but decimate the ICE market, oh but wait, they figured this out didn’t they so tried to destroy every last one… I really hate the f***ing motor industry :mad:
Recently Miles has added an estimate of the MSRP price on it’s website. Turns out the car will cost between $35k en $39k. This will probably make it more expensive than the Chevy Volt E-REV which is projected at $ 35k. The Volt promises to be a much more attractive looking vehicle that will allow you to do at least 40 all electric miles a day before the ICE kicks in. Of course in terms of building quality there is no reason to assume that GM’s offering would be any better than that of any upstart like Miles. Also one might have to wait a little longer for it. Miles wants to launch late 2009, GM late 2010.
After writing this, I discovered the saloon used is chinese, so profit margin will be better as they will cost next to nothing to buy… Maybe crash safety and long term corrosion issues too, I certainly wouldn’t risk paying very good money for a conversion based on a rock bottom priced chinese donor with no track record yet.
In fact I think I know who is really behind the XS 500 now. Turns out there is a Chinese car builder called BYD (which stands for:build your dreams, no kidding!). Apparently they started out as a battery manufacturer and they already have incorporated their battery technology in some hybrid models. The Miles XS 500 happens to be a spitting image of their BYD F3 model. In fact BYD claims it has developed a fully electrical version of their F3, the F3E. They claim a 95 miles top speed, 190 miles range and 600000 miles (!) battery life. These are better figures than Miles projects, but I guess they are wise to tune down these claims a bit. BYD claims to be ready for commercialisation of the F3E. So it would seem to be entirely possible that either Miles or BYD themselves will have an actual BEV for sale sometime soon!